Divine Apostasy Book 6 - Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Ruwen groaned. Sift, Hamma, and Ruwen had fought Talker in the Black Pyramid’s level six. The Mist Wraith had almost killed them all with a vicious curse. Hamma had saved them with a spell from her Chapel Priestess’ Prayer Book. It had been the first time Ruwen had heard one of her powerful Prayers.

“What’s wrong?” Overlord asked.

Ruwen frowned. “That guys was,” Ruwen glanced at Sivart, and then back at Overlord, “crazy,” Ruwen whispered.

“How so?”

Ruwen continued to whisper. “He’s trying to overthrow Blapy and take over the Black Pyramid. He wants to fight a god.”

“Sounds a lot like you, actually,” Overlord said.

Ruwen leaned back, shocked. Overlord had spoken the truth. “Oh, no,” Ruwen muttered.

“I agree with the crazy part, though,” Overlord said. “You’re both nuts. But you have to admire the guy’s ambition.”

Ruwen shook his head. “In my brain lives a fearless, consequence ignoring, version of myself, the literary form of an ambitious revolutionary, and a literal army of books building an impenetrable fortress.”

“Some guys have all the luck,” Overlord said.

In the Black Pyramid, Talker had come across as crazy, and now that Overlord had pointed out that Talker didn’t differ much from Ruwen, it made him question his sanity.

“This place gets weirder every time I come in here,” Ruwen said. He faced Sivart. “There are seven sensory streams feeding this place, although only sight has much flowing. Let me show you where they are?”

Ruwen left the Citadel of Last Breath and returned to his body. He focused on the sensory streams for a few seconds, and then returned to Overlord and Sivart.

Ruwen spoke to the Narrator. “Could you feel those?”

Sivart expanded and then contracted, as if taking a breath. “Feelings are a two-edged blade, accelerating a rise to power while fostering an environment of excess, creating chaos.”

“I’m going to take that as a yes,” Ruwen said. “Can you find something to consume them based on a value from zero to one hundred percent I mentally provide?”

“A good ruler provides, a great one serves,” Sivart replied.

“Oh, I like that one,” Overlord said.

It did sound good. Ruwen turned to Overlord. “I need to leave before Sivart starts making more sense. I’m not prepared for that.”

“Preparation is the foundation of success,” Sivart said.

“See,” Ruwen said. “That makes sense, too. I have to go.”

Overlord waved and Ruwen left his mental construct. Standing back in his shed, he wondered if he’d already gone crazy. It only took a moment to reach the same conclusion as before. Even if he had gone nuts, he might as well try and get home. The only alternative was standing here talking to himself until he died. And he didn’t like himself enough to endure that.

Once again, Ruwen spread his legs just wider than his shoulders, squatted, and cycled through the Wheel.

Using one percent power, Ruwen punched the space in front of him, blocked an imaginary strike with his extended arm, and pulled it back to his side as he struck with his other arm, repeating the process.

The Wheel remained painfully slow to Ruwen’s Diamond senses. Not sure if Sivart could hear him, or if the Narrator had even understood Ruwen’s request, he spoke into his mind. Sivart, reduce by five percent.

Shiny’s distant light dimmed, the edges of the shed’s doorway blurred a little, and Ruwen’s motion sped up.

It had worked.

Although the loss of visual detail surprised Ruwen, he realized it was a predictable side effect of what he wanted to do. Limiting the amount of sensory data meant a loss of clarity.

Sivart, reduce by ten percent, please.

Shiny dimmed again and Ruwen’s strikes visibly increased in pace.

Ruwen smiled and stepped Sivart in five percent chunks all the way to one hundred percent, where Ruwen lost his vision entirely. Interestingly, at one hundred percent, the feeling of immense slowness returned. He asked Sivart to move back to ninety-nine percent and his strikes felt incredibly fast again.

Ruwen guessed the difference between ninety-nine and one hundred related to the flow of sensory data. Blocking it entirely, the equivalent of closing his eyes, was a state his mind already knew how to deal with, causing a return to his normal experience of time.

It appeared Ruwen’s mind only wanted to spend the exact energy necessary, so it provided enough to process the one percent and held the rest in reserve.

With a ninety-nine percent reduction in sensory data, punching at one percent power now felt and looked as fast as his normal one hundred percent strikes.

This meant Ruwen, by adjusting how much sensory data he consumed, could divide his softest punch of one percent into another, even softer, one hundred slices.

Ruwen continued performing the Wheel and triggered the Scarecrow clone to observe. At ninety-nine percent sensory reduction, he could now use one hundredth of one percent of his total power, a value so low he couldn’t have reached it without the help of Sivart.

The strikes still appeared fast to the clone, even at such a reduced power. Ruwen walked the clone to stand in front of his body. He eased the clone forward until a strike landed against his chest.

The clone dissipated from the slight damage, but Ruwen smiled in satisfaction. Even though he’d Fortified his body to early Diamond, he’d managed to find a way to strike no harder than a fourteen-year-old bully. He’d experienced enough of those strikes to recognize them.

Now the hard part. Ruwen needed to practice until he could physically sense the variation in effort and power as he divided his one percent muscle memory into another hundred pieces.

Ruwen had Sivart cycle from one percent reduction to ninety-nine and back down, over and over again. Ruwen gauged his effort against the brightness of Shiny. Hours and then days passed as he continued to practice.

Overlord came and watched the training three times as Ruwen repeated the Wheel tens of thousands of times. Slowly, he began to sense the tiny variations in effort needed.

Once Ruwen felt confident his muscles had absorbed the lower power levels, he stopped.

Thank you, Sivart, I appreciate your help.

Sivart, didn’t appear, but his voice sounded in Ruwen’s mind. Aiding your allies strengthens yourself.

Good advice, actually. I thought of a way you could still help. Can you keep your helpers stationed near those sensory streams? I’ve been stunned before by sound or light or pain and it would be helpful if I could communicate a way to protect myself. Ruwen contemplated the best way to talk about this new system. The critical contribution had come from Sivart, and Ruwen owed this success to the narrator. Maybe something like “Full Sivart” is ninety-nine percent reduction, and “No Sivart” you let everything through. In fact, if I’m not using Last Breath, maybe you should throttle any sensation over twenty percent normal.

Sivart’s voice echoed in Ruwen’s head. Self-preservation is the heart of every decision. Death kills the dream, and the dream must survive.

Ruwen couldn’t tell if that meant yes, so he decided to try it.

Full Sivart, Ruwen said.

Darkness appeared, like Ruwen had squinted his eyes. The coldness disappeared and the thumping of his heart and faint vibrations from moving inside the shed all vanished.

No Sivart, Ruwen thought.

Everything reappeared, and Ruwen smiled. That might come in handy.

All Ruwen had wanted to do was cast a spell, and it had cascaded into all this work. Almost two weeks gone. But the investment had been worth it. Not only had he increased control of his body, he’d also gained protection for his senses. Plus, he’d discovered a way to alter his perception of time by speeding it up.

Ruwen looked inward at his motionless Core. Using his new muscle memory skills, he punched at one hundredth of one percent, his new weakest strike, linking the sensation to spinning his Core. The strike had enough power to knock the wind out of a level one attacker, or to hopefully increase his Core Velocity by one point two out of twelve thousand.

It took twenty seconds before Ruwen felt sure his Core actually rotated. A huge sense of relief made him shiver. He’d put so much effort into this, and it wasn’t even something he’d planned.

Ruwen needed a naming convention for the punching power values weaker than his old minimum of one percent. Thinking of them as values less than zero confused him. Since he’d used Shiny as a brightness gauge throughout his training, he decided to name the values after the star.

One Shiny would be one percent of his previous minimum of one percent, making it one hundredth of his total power. One hundred shiny would be equal to his old one percent.

The Mana orb Ruwen had consumed earlier had maxed his bar, and since then he’d only cast Shed for fifty, leaving him six hundred seventy Mana.

Ruwen threw another punch using One Shiny, while willing an Ember Sphere into existence. His Mana bar dropped a single point, and a flicker of flame, like a spark from a fire, floated briefly in front of him before disappearing.

Everything had worked exactly like Ruwen had expected.

Taking a deep breath, Ruwen let it out slowly. He didn’t bother opening his Profile, and instead pictured the icon for the Gravitational Architect Role, a black sphere.

Ruwen’s heart thudded as he pushed memories of the Elders from his thoughts.

Once again, Ruwen struck the air in front of him using One Shiny, but this time he focused on the Gravitational Role.

Ruwen’s Mana dropped by one, and a black sphere the size of a pea appeared at the end of his outstretched arm, only visible against the backdrop of the star Shiny’s light.

Ruwen pulled his arm back as his body was pulled forward toward the black sphere, his feet sliding across the floor.

This hadn’t happened before when he’d killed all the Elders. Ruwen’s chest struck the sphere and he stopped moving. The gravity sphere had appeared this time exactly where he’d been focusing, his fist. When he’d killed the Elders, he’d focused on the floor under them. It must have appeared there, out of sight.

The black sphere vibrated and after a moment, dissolved. The pull from the sphere disappeared as well. Just like in the temple in New Eiru, the effects didn’t last long.

How could he extend the duration of this spell? Eventually he needed to learn how to channel these things, but he hoped he didn’t need to master that right now.

A level eighteen Collector Mana spell came to mind, and he used his indexed log to find it.

Spell: Fresh Harvest

Effect: Alter the flow of time, slowing it immensely, keeping the target from spoiling. Each spell level increases the bubble by three feet, and the duration by 6 hours—movement within the sphere destroys the effect.

Fresh Harvest was how the cities received and stored fruits and vegetables, keeping them fresh until use. Could he use this to slow time around the gravity sphere?

Ruwen repeated the process, and another pea sized sphere appeared against his outstretched fist. He immediately cast Fresh Harvest around the tiny orb for one hundred fifty Mana.

After twenty seconds, Ruwen yelled in excitement. It had worked. Grabbing the gravity sphere, he used his fingers to scoop a hole in the middle of the shed’s floor. He placed the orb in the hole and replaced the chunk of floor.

Ruwen stopped channeling Sow Seed. He took a step and then another. The sensation of something as simple as gravity overwhelmed him.

Ruwen sat. Until now, days of intense focus had kept the feelings of loneliness away. He’d worked hard for this small success, but it also made him realize how much he missed home. How much he missed his friends.

Casting Campfire took five seconds and one hundred fifty Mana. Ruwen pulled off his hood and gloves, and placed them in his lap, pleased that they no longer floated away. He held out his hands, the heat feeling wonderful against his frigid skin.

Ruwen wondered if his friends had made it out of Legion’s fifth vault okay, if they were okay, and if they missed him like he missed them.

Instead of starting something new immediately, Ruwen took a break, and used the hour-long campfire to think about his friends and remember the craziness of the last few months.